The grown-up face of sci-fi

A new, more thoughtful breed of science fiction — such as Attack the Block — is helping to save the genre from a CGI invasion

M
ovie
science fiction used to ask questions. Who are we and what are we doing here
(2001: A Space Odyssey)? How will we cope with overpopulation (Soylent
Green, Logan’s Run)? Could we colonise other planets (Blade Runner)? Will
technology fuel fascistic social control (THX 1138)? Yet the main question
posed by sci-fi cinema in the past 25 years appears to have been “How do we
kill this damned alien scum?” (Aliens, Predator, Independence Day, War of
the Worlds, Transformers, Battle: Los Angeles).

Now a fresh crop of directors are pumping personal vision, intelligence and
ideas into a deflated genre, liberating sci-fi from the tyranny of aliens,
robots, spaceships and, on occasion, alien spaceships that look like robots.

“Science fiction should make you question the world you live in,” says Gareth
Edwards, the director of last year’s Monsters, a hyper-real road movie that
blends feral peril and lo-fi love story. “In